Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Edmund Reese: And I’ll just add to Tim’s point, then you heard me mention that we do expect both the capital markets and the wealth management for the full year to be within that 5% to 8% sort of longer-term 3-year objectives. We feel good about that. And I think that will be more weighted for both of those businesses, again, to the third quarter relative to the fourth quarter.

Dan Perlin : Got it. That’s super helpful. Tim, this is kind of a bigger picture question. You alluded to it a little bit, but you said you talked to a bunch of clients at Davos, we turned the page on the calendar here. So just the operating environment, the expectations, the pace of commitment from clients. I’m just trying to figure out where the pockets of, I guess, incremental demand in your view, will come from? And then maybe the speed with which you think clients are willing to put capital back into their business.

Tim Gokey: Yes. Thanks, Dan. And I — these days, it’s a little bit embarrassing to talk about Davos, I guess, but it is a great opportunity to connect with a bunch of clients all at the same time. So it was a really useful set of discussions. And I think the nice demand that we’re seeing for the second half, it really is those 2 factors I talked about before, which is it’s a little bit of catch-up of discussions that were already taking place. And then it is — then is new discussions. And we are seeing — and it is — people are being cautious. So they’re really looking at areas where they see very tangible returns or they have very specific needs that they need to address. And many of our products fit into that arena. But we’re — as we look at incremental demand going forward, there is a big industry change around tailored shareholder reports.

We have a great solution for that, that really saves our clients’ money over any other way they could implement it. That is not only going to be a nice driver of sales in the second half, but it’s really improving our whole relationship with the fund industry as being part of the solution. The digital communications, those conversations continue to be very robust really across all of our wealth management firms as they are looking to how do they better engage their clients and do so at lower cost. And with the conversion of one of the large wealth management players and the success of that, that I think is a great proof point on that. The — and while we’re just talking about communications, I don’t want to actually skip over the fact that the — when you look at our omnichannel communication strategy, it had the 2 parts that had the long-term conversion to digital, but had a pretty extended midterm period of that market is still 50% unvended.

And there are a lot of in-house players that are basically losing scale as the world goes more digital and are, therefore, choosing to outsource. And we have some of those conversations going as well. So I think all sides of the communications will have some nice sales in the second half. Continued strength in front office. A lot of discussions there. As you know, we’re sort of but number three, but numbers one and numbers two are really not investing in their business, and our clients are looking for long-term partners and so having a lot of great discussions there. And then the wealth side, double sales in the first half, and I said a really good discussions around the components that we have — that we’ve talked about with clients having those components in their hands to trial them in a sandbox environment, seeing how they play out.

And so we see really some really nice strength across multiple dimensions of the strategy.

Operator: Our next question comes from Darrin Peller from Wolfe Research.

Darrin Peller : Just maybe a quick follow-up on the wealth side. When you think about the cross-selling opportunities and what you — what kind of progress you’ve been making that either is embedded in the closed sales now or obviously could be embedded in the year ahead. Maybe just comment again on how that’s been progressing after UBS is now more —

Tim Gokey: Darrin, it’s Tim. Thank you because it’s a — we think it’s a great topic for us. We talked at our Investor Day about how the pipeline has really accelerated over the past year is now at over $200 million. And so then the question has really been about how to begin to convert that pipeline into sales. And what I just talked about is as we have live software and it makes a huge difference for our clients to be able to demo, hands-on keys, have a sandbox, see the software with their own data inside. And so I think that is one of the things that has really led to the strong first half and why we feel like we have a good traction in the second half. And it is across a pretty broad set of components. Remember that for UBS, there were 29 different components that we invested in and modernized and brought to the cloud.

And so whether that’s tax or it’s client onboarding or its corporate actions, many clients see a little bit different path in terms of what their immediate need is and sort of their — on their transition to sort of a north star. And so we’re having just lots of good conversations both in the U.S. and in Canada. So it’s — we feel good about where we are.

Edmund Reese: And just one point to add to Tim. We quantified what we expect in terms of incrementality from wealth at $28 million to $30 million in incremental sales, and we still, as Tim just said, we feel very good about that number.

Darrin Peller : And then just one quick follow-up. Just to revisit the BRCC, the customer communications business. I know you talked about the obvious digital transformation from print. I mean, maybe just help us understand how to think about the growth profile of that business. I know it’s — it had been challenged a little bit after you first closed the deal and then it went to pretty strong positive growth rates pretty consistently. I think it was flat right now. Just remind us again what your expectations are for that?

Tim Gokey: Yes.And I just have to put in one more time in plug that we really think this quarter was a great demonstration of how our broader omnichannel communication strategy is working. And the growth rates will be ticked up and down, as you just said, Darrin, in any particular quarter. But longer term, what we are — that strategy is really the one we talked about from before, which is to leverage our scale, our synergies and technology to be the low-cost provider in the industry. To consolidate print, which is still 50% unvended as in-house operations lose scale and then to drive print to high digital footprint — drive from print to high-margin digital. So that remains the strategy. As we think about how all that plays into sort of long-term growth expectations, we continue to see not any given quarter, but over many quarters, we expect sort of low single-digit top line growth with expanding margins and low double-digit earnings growth.

So that’s really sort of the profile you should expect from that business.

Operator: Our next question comes from Peter Heckmann from D.A. Davidson.

Peter Heckmann: Going back to tailored shareholder reports and some of the compliance market there. Can you talk about how you’re thinking about the opportunity around tailored shareholder reports for Broadridge? I’m sure it’s dependent upon the wins, but I guess, how do you feel your position there?